bland_flabbis

The way I see it, Pawlett goes down, the ref says he dives and books him, no more punishment needed. But in this case Pawlett goes down ref gives a penalty, completely changing the course of the  game and possibly a season, imagine if Hibs go down or Aberdeen stay up and the margin is 2 points that dive just relegated a team that would have stayed up, hence the bigger punishment.

Punishments like this shouldn't be used to compensate for the referee making a mistake. It's also not much compensation for the team that have been hurt by the decision. Imagine for instance if Rangers won a game against Hibs with a dive, then the next game Rangers were playing Dunfermline (who Hibs are in a relegation battle against) and they have one of their players suspended. That doesn't actually help Hibs at all, it just makes it worse.

As far as I'm concerned it's completely unworkable to dish out punishments based on the consequences of cheating, as opposed to the offence itself. If you take that principle to its logical extreme then where does it end? Should players be banned for minor fouls that they get away with in the build up to a goal? Or a handball (like Henry against Ireland)? A very minor offence can have huge consequences for a match/season but that doesn't make the offence itself any worse.

Was a bit of a howler by Gonzalez today, but to be fair to him when I saw the replay it was a bit more awkward than it looked at first. It was one of those hideous shots that you can't really palm away from the danger area as it's coming straight at you, but is also pretty hard to take in as well due to the pace on the ball.

Still should have done better right enough.

It was a good performance in the second half, but to be honest almost any time I've been there recently I haven't come away from it thinking we've been outplayed. It's usually a tight, nothing game that they scrap out a few sh*te goals in and win regardless. Just never seems to happen for us there, even when we play well and create chances it falls to bits at the crucial moment (a la Foster today).

We see this every year, are people really so fuckign stupid that they can't see that pre-season reflects almost nothing of the season to come.

Even the thing about signings happens every year. Strangely enough if you look at it quite a few of the teams that make loads of signings in the summer end up having bad seasons (Falkirk a couple of years ago, for instance). I remember us doing something similar in the late 90s - think it was 97 when Aitken spent about £2 million in the summer and then got sacked before Christmas. It's a bit of a cliche, but doing nothing really is better than making a load of bad signings for the sake of it.

Got to admire the creativity of journalists in Scotland. No quotes, presumably nothing to write about, so just make something up that's vaguely topical. They didn't even need to hack into anyone's phone.

So you know that Langfield is the absolute best we can get for his money (whatever that is)?

We could do better than Langfield and it would be silly for me or anyone else to argue that we can't, but we could also do a lot worse. Every keeper we've brought to the club since Langfield became our number one has been worse than him. Bossu was a joke. Nelson looked worse when given the chance (Falkirk 3-1 game). Soutar, despite a strange bandwagon that got going at one point, was worse and as much to blame for QotS as anyone. Howard was given a chance this year and looked worse. Youngsters like Bain and Bateman haven't pushed into the first team.

Granted you can blame the managers who signed these keepers for that, but it also tells you that in amongst the kinds of keepers we're in the market for, Langfield is pretty decent. He's not the best we can get, but if you used that standard to judge players then nobody in our squad would meet it - I'm sure there's a better midfielder out there than Milsom on the same wages, a better striker than Vernon on the same wages, and so on.

There is no way this should still be an issue given his age and experience.

You would have thought so, but then look at the likes of David James (still starting for England at last year's World Cup at 39) or Jens Lehman (seemingly going back to Arsenal at 41). Both known for making gaffes and mistakes, but they've still had successful careers. Reckon Lehman will be due at least one horrendous title ruining error if he plays for Arsenal.

This is the utterly frustrating thing about langfield.  One week he's nicky walker on valium next he's pulling of saves theo would have been proud of.  After tannadice he owed us one big time and he paid up today but ultimately i see no signs of his consitency improving.  He was just the same five years ago. 

I agree that he's still inconsistent, but I'd also say there are some things that he's improved a bit. His distribution is actually a bit better now in my opinion - it's not good because it was almost ridiculously bad to start off with, but it is better (his slip against St Mirren excepted).

You could say the same about taking crosses - it's still a weakness, but do we remember how bad it used to be (e.g. flapping at a cross in the last minute against Caley Thistle a few years ago and leaving Barry Wilson with a tap in)? I think the efforts of the coaching staff in those areas have paid off to an extent, but the one thing you can't coach out of someone is random lapses in concentration.

I think the rules are the same. United got into the UEFA cup via the Scottish Cup win, thus taking the European place allocated to the Cup.  If they had already qualified for the Champions League then County would have got into Europe.

Yeah, that's my understanding of it. If Celtic won the cup and the league then the losing finalist would get into Europe. If Celtic just won the cup and didn't win the league then the losing finalist wouldn't get into Europe.

All irrelevant to us now in any case so we'll just have to win it.

First reaction is fuck sake but second is we'd have to beat them at some point so why not take the cunts out in the semi final, assuming we both get there. Law of averages is we'll have to beat them sometime, they are in a title battle where as we're fighting for nothing, surely even we could produce better than our last dismal effort against them?

Can see what you're saying, but I'm having trouble getting past "fuck sake" myself. If we'd lost to them in the final we'd at least have got into Europe (if Celtic win the league).

Scored twice against St Johnstone yesterday

Not saying he's good or bad here (because I don't know enough about him to have an opinion) but I watched the highlights of that game and I'm not sure what was on display really classed as football. It was more rolling around in the mud with a little bit of action here and there. The pitch was an absolute nonsense.

That was priceless. Poor performance, but you can't beat a scrappy, undeserved equaliser in the 4th minute of injury time to stay in the cup. My flatmate is a St Mirren fan and as soon as the ball hit the net he just quietly got up, walked out the room and is now presumably sobbing under his duvet.

Next up for Red Stars is a game againt Beechwood Albion on Thursday night in Stirling.

How'd this one go?

Percentage of Shots Which Are Scored 07/08 + 08/09

Darren Mackie - 23%

Lee Miller - 19%

Sone Aluko - 17%

Jamie Smith - 12%

Chris Maguire - 10%

Mackie is the best finisher at the club. FACT. END OF. etc.

Wasn't there today but thought he was MOTM last week, and from what been reading here it sounds like he had another good performance today.

I thought he played well against Caley, but I was more impressed with him today than I was with him last week. He was really comfortable on the ball, had a couple of good runs and was very composed when asked to defend - almost the anti-Foster.

As far as I can tell, a lot of people think Falkirk will do well because they added a lot of experience to their young team and (according to John Hughes) the reason they weren't up challenging for Europe last year is due to a lack of "bottle" and a "winning mentality". That still doesn't make Jackie McNamara or Neil McCann good signings though.

Celtic

Rangers

Hearts

Aberdeen

Dundee United

Caley Thistle

Motherwell

Hibs

Hamilton

Falkirk

Kilmarnock

St Mirren

I need a spare ticket also (doesn't matter what stand) if anyone has one. Cheers.

I have the pace of a snail, questionable fitness without being overweight and like to think of myself as a creative midfielder. I'm Jeffrey De Visscher.

St Mirren at Pittodrie gets my vote. Every year we start off without winning one of the first two games there's always a wave of panic that spreads through the support and the team and leads to more nervy performances at the start of the year than it should.

It's impossible to tell whether there was contact or not and that makes all the difference. There's no question that he went down easily under the challenge, but if the keeper comes flying out, misses the ball and makes contact with the player then it's a penalty and anyone with a grain of sense will go down in that situation.

They do have a lot of great players so I'd take a narrow defeat to be honest (as opposed to a humiliation). At least we have them away from home, we have to hope we can take some points at home if we want to get through and that's a lot easier when we're playing the weaker two sides at Pittodrie.

The first half for me was entirely explained by the formation we were playing, I'm not sure whether I'd describe it as 3 at the back or 5 at the back, but the most accurate description was that we had 8 players standing permanently within the width of the penalty box up the middle of the pitch and two "wing backs" (who evidently can't play that position very well). The end result was that whenever Killie got the ball there seemed to be acres of space for them to pass it around whilst when we had the ball we struggled to find any space whatsoever. It's not as if Killie were playing some incredibly fluent pass and move football either, they looked completely average but our shambles of a system handed the first half to them on a plate.

In the second half we changed the system and looked decent until we were 2-0 up, then after they scored we gave up trying to go forward and camped in our own penalty box until the end of the game. As for performances:

Langfield - same story as ever, can't kick, flaps at crosses but is capable of making the odd good save. Of the two I remember one was a genuinely good save and the other he got lucky with because he came to take a cross, fumbled it and some Killie player was standing right in front of him and smashed it off him before he knew anything about it.

Strikers - all of them actually played fairly well at times, Mackie looked good in the second half, Brewster looked good in the first half but got tired quickly. Lovell had a good second half and even Miller held the ball up well when he came on. I'd actually rather start with Miller than Brewster and bring Brewster on towards the end of the game.